Mind is above all clever; clever as they say, as a barrel of monkeys.
Like monkeys jumping restlessly from one branch to another, so too
the mind flickers from object to object and thought to thought. It is
personal, active, outward-looking, and perishable. While the mind is
good at sifting and sorting, it is not good at making choices.
Memory, without which we cannot function, is an aspect of mind.
The imprints of experiences and sensations are stored by memory
within the fabric of consciousness. This permits mind to propose se
lections such as, "I like the blue, mauve, orange, and pink shirts, but
remember that blue suits me best." What we call consumer choice is
not a choice but a selection. It offers only an illusion of freedom. The
choice to consume has already been made. Mind alone cannot factor
in questions like, "Can I afford the shirt?" or "Do I need yet another
one?" Mind can select which one to buy but cannot of itself answer the
binary problem, "Do I buy a new shirt or don't I?" Mind senses
understands-sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste, but mind is pow
erless without its storehouse of past imprints. Therefore when a child
is asked to pick up red, he refers to the imprint of red in the cloth of
consciousness.
There is a perfectly sensible historical reason for this. Mind, all
minds, whether brilliant or dull, are equipped with a simple and in
stinctual survival tool that is, "Repeat pleasure and avoid pain." This
enables us to avoid putting our hands in the fire twice or continually
trying to quench our thirst with sea water. The converse of "nasty" im
plying danger is that "nice" or pleasurable implies the opposite, which
is a survival advantage. You can see this most strongly in sexual re
production. If the sexual act were unpleasant, it would hardly favor the
propagation of either our individual genes or the species in general.
If we look at the case of wild animals, we can see this mechanism
working, within the context of their lives, almost entirely to their ben
efit. Think of a brown bear during the autumn salmon run pleasurably
guzzling fish after fish. He will need the excess fat to get him through
backadmin
(backadmin)
#1